Trace of the past Reviews

Bad game

[b]4/10[/b] Admittedly, I'm a bit of sucker for the "explore this abandoned place to learn about yourself" genre. Although Trace of the Past has no English reviews, all of the ones in other languages were positive, so I decided to give it a shot. Although a little sparsely furnished, I liked the boarding school location. The gameplay is standard adventure game fare (find the key to unlock the door, grab another item to take care of another issue, etc.). It was all very intuitive, not frustrating. However, I wish that the player's default walk/run speeds were a little quicker. My favorite thing about the game were the stylized illustrations of each of the administrators of the boarding school. These were shown on the screen when the player enters the respective locations associated with each (the headmaster, the security guard, the doctor, etc.). One oddity about the game is the way that the options menu is organized. Hitting the "home" key on your keyboard brings up the menu, but I found it to be incomprehensible. I couldn't find a layout for the controls of the game, and I couldn't find a way to play the game in windowed mode, which I sometimes prefer. The main reason for such a low score is that the game locked my character in place after one of the aforementioned illustrations (of the teacher). I reloaded from my last autosave, but the game then locked me in place again at the same moment. I couldn't progress any further through the story.

Not a bad short horror experience. Charles revisits his old "school" to remember his past. The story unfolds as he progresses through the structure, shown in cut scenes. Saves occur with each level. There are a few puzzles and items to pick up and use. Be warned: a demon will chase you near the end.